Thursday, December 8, 2011

Knowledge and Hope

In light of the entrenched skepticism about knowledge claims, how can we effectively converse about Christ's call to life in His Kingdom?  Such conversations often deteriorate into long-winded debate on epistemology, and the opportunity to actually talk about Jesus slips by.

In comes "Hope".  If someone asks me, which sometimes happens when they find out I am an "evangelical", if I know that I am going to heaven, I will usually answer, "No, but I hope I am".  I am willing to let go of the language of knowledge in order to talk about the content of Christian hope (content which is much more weighty than "going to heaven").  I've never been to heaven nor seen it.  But I hope for it.  I have never been without enmity toward me and from me toward others, but I hope for it.  As Romans 8:24 says, "Who hopes for what they already have?"  (see also Heb. 11)

If I talk about hope, then I also have to define hope and how it works with Christian truth.  It is not an unlikely hope, like "I hope Duke has a winning football season", nor is it a whimsical hope, like "I hope it snows today".  Rather it hope that lies at the core of my being.  It is hope that, if proven futile, will be my undoing.  And it is a hope that I fully expect to one day know with certainty.  I will see and touch and feel it.  But not today.  Today I get a taste, a promise of what is not yet.  And I hope for more - I live my life in anticipation of that day when Hope becomes Realized and we  (never just "I") meet the Lord face to face.

This kind of hope merits explanation to our curious, even our disinterested friends.  And it sets the stage for us to ask, "What about you?  What do you hope for?  And why?"  The content of our hope is then center stage and the questions of certainty can be set aside, at least for a time.  We need still to be "ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you the reason for the hope that you have".  This of course begs the question of whether anyone would see us as a people of hope?  And, if so, would they be able to identify the object/content of our hope?  If our expressed hope if merely for a good job and an easy life then I am not so sure much good will come of all this.

We'll leave for another post the question of what this means for the idea of Truth.  Suffice it to say that it is entirely possible to hope for something that is Truly True.

So what about you?  What do you hope for?  And why?